A Whisper of Fire in the Vein
by AceralRayneRaith
Summary: Haruhi is a good friend. But this is high school, and reputations are so easily slaughtered. Boys are jerks, but girls are mean. You just have to survive; rumors can be character-building too. AU and OOC.
1. Chapter 1

I know… I know… I suck huge monkey balls. I must apologize for totally falling off the face of the planet, especially with two works that I have to finish. And now I have this one—I really suck…

Good news though: this one is completed! And each short chapter will post every other day! At the end of which, I will recommence posting those other two chapters…

So why this was more important… recently, my real world has been… hectic and brought up some very bad memories. Which is where this came from. This story is based on a true story.

Rating: **T**—for language. Lots of language.

The story is AU and OOC, but Ouran is a high school, and this stuff can happen. Anyway, read and review and expect the next installment on Monday!

* * *

In their most basic sense, rumors are words. They are phonemes and morphemes of language that only hurt because we say that they do when we give them meaning. And that meaning translates into symbols. And, anthropologically speaking, that's what culture is based on… symbols.

Words can't do anything to you. They're powerless until you give them power.

But, speaking as a human, words are the strongest weapon that humanity possesses.

And so the words hurt. They ripped at me. Scarred me, and wounded me, and made me bleed all internally so that no one could see the destroyed being I became.

Because of rumors.

"You know she cheated on him… she wanted to sleep with some other guy, and then she had to dump him when he found out."

"I hear she lost it in an orgy."

"She's such a fucking slag."

They're watching. Eyes bright with malice, teeth gleaming with poison. They are willing to ruin me. I am the prey to their predatory rumors. I can feel the snickers and taste the smirks and hear their rolling eyes. They want me to die.

I hate high school because this was never supposed to be how my third year ended.

"Whore."

"Slut."

"Bitch."

I clench my eyes and will the tears away.

I can't let them see me cry. I can't be weak and play into their game. I know the truth. And so do my friends. I can't give up.

And I can't let my father find out.

* * *

So, hope you enjoy. Stay tuned for our next chapter!


	2. Chapter 2

Once more, we find ourselves immersed in the drama of high school. For those of you out there who do not like getting information in bits and pieces, I'm sorry—that's how it has to be. As this was a true happening, that's how it happened. Information came in bits and pieces. You'll know all when Haruhi decides to spill.

Anyway, please read and review. It would kind of make my life right now.

* * *

Tamaki is waiting by my locker, lavendar eyes furrowed and arms crossed.

"How are you holding up, doll face?"

It's been maybe an hour since the news broke to the rest of the school, and if last night wasn't rough enough, the obvious glances and shouted whispers are more than enough to flay each wound that's been inflicted wide open again.

"Move."

Tamaki's not my favorite person in the world at this moment in time, and by his apologetic eyes, he knows it.

He respectfully shuffles six inches out of my path. But hangs there, like the nuisance he is becoming.

"You know I'm with you…" he offers.

My look shuts him up. His lips clamp together, and he rubs at his forearms nervously.

Tamaki may be with me, _through thick and thin_, but he doesn't love me enough to cut the ties I needed for him to cut when I first called. And that hurts more than just about anything.

"I need you to leave me alone right now," I seethe quietly, hands clenched around my Calculus text like my thighs are clenched around the virginity that still sits between my legs, despite what is being said. "And I think you should just go to him."

This tore us apart. There is a clean division, a swift cleft, and the survivors are either jumping ship or trying to find a lifeboat, choosing sides based on who is the captain.

"You know that I love you," he mumbles softly, leaning forward to press his nose into the fine hairs at my temple.

"I love you too, but I don't like you right now."

I stick my head in my locker to prevent anyone from seeing the tears that quiver on my eyelashes.

Tamaki hovers. He's good at it.

I hate him so much right now.

"Just go."

Litanies and benedictions seem to fall against my ears – I have never been a religious person, but then again, this God character has always kind of screwed me over.

"Tramp."

"Trollop."

"Jezebel."

It's back – the whispers have taken shape once more and rise in a unanimous tide of ambiguous loathing. They originate from a girl with too much hate in her heart, too much money at her disposal, and too many bows in her hair.

I have never fit in here, and this is just one further cruel joke. The fact that Tamaki associates himself with my presence has to do with the fact that he's practically a bastard in his grandmother's eyes – if we were to go by looks, money, and charm alone, he'd have caused mass swooning and hysteria in the proud bearers of estrogen and ovaries.

But I'm not enough. Once more, it is thrown blatantly in my face as he plays the go-between to the golden boy of the school.

Friendship is willing, but sex is enthralling.

"I'll be by after school."

And I am alone.

* * *

Tune back in Wednesday for your next installment!

And review by clicking that box below this. Pretty please.

A la prochaine!


	3. Chapter 3

Here we go… more answers.

Please do not think that what Haruhi says is what I believe. To mistake it for my preaching would be to misunderstand the character on a whole. Just had to get that out there.

Anyway, please read and review. I'll see you at the bottom.

* * *

Society tells females that generally all of their worth can be found between their thighs. You're nothing without virginity. There is hype, but no sex. Puppy love, but no rubbing. Lust, but no touching. It is only with marriage that a reprieve comes – then, it's okay. It's your husband. It's forever.

I do not believe in forever.

Then again, I come from a shattered home – and by shattered, I mean that my house was pulled apart by tragedy.

Because cancer is so very tragic.

I could see it in the eyes of the doctors as they fixed their faces with appropriate moues and sad smiles as they looked over my mother's medical files those years ago.

At the time, I was drunk on innocence, naïveté, and age – after all, one should never be expected to deal with tragedy at six.

Mother put on a good face for me, took me to get ice cream on our way home, and then left me to play as she sat my father, _her forever_, down and told him what had made no sense to me at the time.

It is the only time that I can ever remember my father crying.

Looking back, I knew little of what happened – "doctor speak" sounded fuzzy in my ears, and the bags beneath my mother's eyes were hidden like the skeletal frame she would acquire.

The one truth of the whole experience came as we stood above the freshly-tilled earth of her newly-dug grave, and I watched as my father's _forever_ was snuffed out.

My father is a good man and a better father – he works hard, and I see little of him. My mother was the one woman that he ever loved, but the men that he now flirts with are the temporary flings he allows himself in his never-ending search for _something more_.

He has yet to find it. He deserves it.

He says none of this, but I can see it, deep within the amber flecks of his irises; it is a slow poison that gnaws at his soul.

It is in this way that I became jaded and apathetic. And so I did not see anything particularly important when it came to the importance of being virginal – not that I had a host of suitors knocking down my door. But what others did not seem to understand was that _forever _was such an inappropriate and idealistic way to live life. However, I was not stupid – I knew that sleeping around would serve no purpose just like giving it up would only open my life up to a host of new issues.

And then Kyoya Ootori waltzed into my life.

The thing to be understood about the third son is that he does not take 'no' for an answer. He commands attention and power. Dark and brooding, his sneer could stun a teacher, induce massive amounts of moe, and shut a fellow student down. He is beautiful and dark, a genius combination of a zygote and diploid cells. And he is ruthless.

I once admired that about him.

Kyoya understood that which filled my head, or so it seemed. And that is how I found trouble.

I was stunned for the mere reason that he humbled himself to talk to the commoner when he appeared before me one day, glasses glinting and smirk in place.

"You're Haruhi Fujioka… the scholarship student," he murmured, that coldly dulcet tone ripping at the nerves of my spinal cord in a dance of shivers.

"Yes."

I was not moved emotionally. My stars did not realign. My stomach did not flutter. My palms did not sweat. And my heart stayed exactly in its place in my chest. I felt more for the fact that he had broken societal conformity and hierarchy than I ever did for him. And any hurt that I incurred arose with the vicious slander traveling the halls and making my schooling – the area for which I felt the most – near impossible.

"You're not halfway unattractive," he purred again.

My silence was its own gratitude wrapped around a nod.

"I was wondering if you'd like to go out with me."

There were stares being thrown our way, and the heady sensation of _being noticed_ screamed through my temples. I had never before been noticed, and I wasn't sure that it was something that I particularly enjoyed. He must have found some sort of consent in my shy gaze, as that smirk widened and those glasses glittered.

"Dinner… at my house? This Saturday... I'll have a driver pick you up."

That was another thing about Kyoya, and the rest of the student body… they had scads of money to throw around with whatever passing fancy managed to snag their attention for more than three seconds.

His hand extended across the space between us and found mine, turning my hand until it faced the obscenely ornate chandeliers. His mouth descended upon the fleshy part of my palm, and a hot blush crept up my cheeks.

"Excellent."

And people stared.

My story is not a love story.

For all the fact that Kyoya was this hardened business man-boy who never acted without some sort of incentive or merit, he was a teenage boy. And teenage boys are jerks. And so I can say with certainty that I do not see how ruining the reputation of one little commoner had any merit other than trying to make me cry.

Perhaps I will never know why he did it.

But it happened. There are odious and copious amounts of proof pertaining to his involvement.

"Skank."

"Bitch."

"Hoe."

And I just have to deal with the fall-out.

* * *

Alright… now we have a guy and a general understanding maybe… are you piecing it together?

I'd love it if you let me know what you were thinking. Please make me infinitely happy by clicking that button below this.

Tune in Friday for more good times!


	4. Chapter 4

Just remembered I'm supposed to post today. God, I'm smart…

Anyway, glad people are enjoying so far. Our cast of characters is about to increase again. I told you I'd work all the Hosts in… one way or another.

Please review and let me know what you think.

* * *

I called Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin after Kyoya dumped me.

Hikaru and Kaoru were the first people to be nice to me when I first arrived at Ouran. And that was only because of their keen interest in all things commoner, my ability to distinguish between the two, and the copious amounts of brown hair that hung between my shoulders – they were experimenting with paper clips, and I lost more than a few strands to their 'fashion cause'.

So, no, our relationship was not founded in commonality – unless you want to count their love of supermarkets – and like-mindedness and shared jokes like so many high school relationships are.

It was shallow and vapid and very much like them.

In all honesty, the twins could never love anyone half as much as they loved each other, and I could respect that.

We were kind and nice and polite, and, deep down, perhaps they cared more for me than I was originally led to believe.

So, as Kyoya's message played across my screen, there was one thing for me to do. And forty minutes later, there were two golden-irised clones standing on my apartment's doorstep with a half-eaten carton of some 'commoner ice cream'.

"We heard that girls eat ice cream when they get their hearts broken…" Hikaru intoned, tone blunt as his brother moved to wrap his arms around me – the hug was rough and unpracticed, a leftover reminder of a lack of physical contact growing up except from the other doppelganger.

"And that they like hugs," Kaoru added helpfully. "So we stopped by the market and had a store hand pick it when they lost our game. But then we got hungry, so…"

The gesture was thoughtful. I could respect that too.

I did not have the heart to tell them that after only a month of "dating", my heart was nowhere near broken, so I took their ice cream and accepted their coddles and counted myself lucky that at least someone did not think that I was 'a mistake'.

It was only when the rumors first started that the twins became invaluable.

They had felt the brunt of it before. They knew how to shield. Badly, but they tried.

"So did you really sleep with his sister and then invite him to join you?" Hikaru asks the morning after the break-up. It is after Tamaki has left me… _for him_… and both boys are escorting me to our Japanese History class.

"I heard that she wanted the eldest Ootori, and Kyoya caught them in bed together," Kaoru mutters.

"People suck."

They're like magic words in the worst way – both twins shut down and avoid the other's gaze. In our second year, people said that incest was the sure-fire future of the Hitachiin empire – there are still murmurings of it in the hall, but we ignore it… for the most part.

"Yes," Hikaru laughs, though it lacks joy and charm and humor. "People do."

His brother lifts a hand to touch his brother and thinks better of it, instead linking around mine.

"Shall we go to class?"

I am part of a shaky trio.

Holding hands with two boys who would rather be touching the other person who has always been there when parental places were filled by nannies and maids and no love. I am but an intruder, yet here we are.

Walking down the halls of Ouran…

"Strumpet."

Hikaru holds my right hand, and Kaoru my left…

"Floozy."

I feel stranded in an ocean of hatred and suspended on a lifeboat with holes…

"Tart."

The insults are dulled only slightly by the boys on either side of me, but I am no longer alone.

And that makes this all almost sickly satisfying.

* * *

So there we go. Your next update will be here Sunday.

I am an attention whore. Make my day and stroke my ego by reviewing. Pretty please and thank you.


	5. Chapter 5

I'm late posting this—I had a previous engagement with a friend, and this is the first opportunity I've had to sit down at my computer, so I debated whether or not to post it today or hold off till tomorrow. But as your last update, the final chapter of this, might be a bit late due to real life issues, I figured I'd give it a go.

So, yes, you heard me right. This is the second to last chapter. Are you ready to put the pieces together?

Read on and enjoy.

* * *

The story was splashed across the front page of my newspaper this morning. And suddenly so many things made sense to me.

So I sat there dumbly, staring as all of the pieces of the puzzle that had been assembled around me fell so magically into place.

My father found me sitting at our kitchen table with the paper spread before me, fighting with my want to burn it and read it in equal measure.

He walked by, and his hand found the long hair that caressed my neck.

"Oh honey… you deserve so much more."

He kissed my head, balled the offending article up, and went to go sleep after his night out.

And I went to school.

And Tamaki stalked me. And the twins held me. And everyone watched me.

After school, I get more proof as they stand outside the gates of Ouran, waiting for their respective limos, curled around the other.

I almost feel sorry for the girl who looks my way, too much hate in her heart and too many bows in her hair. Her hands are curled into possessive, little claws in the lapels of his uniform, and her gaze is on me, fetid and angry and seething with that sick pride in what she has accomplished. And he watches my movements, though he tries to hide it behind a glare of lens and a smirk for her.

I am not surprised. I'm not angry, nor am I jealous.

But the text message seems to burn a hole in my pocket, and I can see it behind my lids. As with my first read-through, the words 'regret', 'mistake', and 'never' blare through my subconscious still. Perhaps that is what hurts the most – that they would so obviously cook up this scheme to hurt me when I expected so little of a relationship.

After all, I do not have an empire beneath me. And my ubiquitous beauty is imagined. All I have is my brain, and instead my sanctuary of school has been torn asunder.

It was unnecessary cruelty for the commoner kid.

But I have my pass to Yale already, and I just need to survive, and then they can have Japan all to themselves.

After all, the wedding and merger between the Ootori and Houshakuji families has been in the works since _ever_, and I was never not going to leave – I had been very upfront when Kyoya had pressed me into a relationship: he was never going to be enough to keep me here and stand in my way of my collegiate future.

So I stand there and do not stare, and Hikaru, Kaoru, and Tamaki surround me in a flurry.

"They're getting married," I offer, and scowls abound.

"So, their daddies agreed on a business merger," HHHKaoru mutters acerbically. And I can feel my head nod.

"I bet she'll look heinously tacky. She is French after all," Hikaru says, shooting a sly look in the direction of the blond at our side.

But not even a joking insult slipped in for Tamaki can replace the sad, jaded look in his pretty, lavender eyes. He so obviously expected something different, and it will never come to pass. Tamaki loved Kyoya far more than I ever did, and that's _sad_… especially since Tamaki has continued to be friendly towards Kyoya even though he knows the exacting details of our break-up.

The friendship and crush that he has kept for so many years has come to naught.

"You deserve so much more," I whisper to him, linking our hands together. I look at Renge, with those possessive, angry eyes, and Kyoya, with his ice man heart, and maybe, just maybe, we dodged a bullet. "They almost deserve each other."

He smiles, though it's false, and directs his gaze to me.

"Want a ride home?"

Graduation's in a month. And I figure there's nothing wrong with having everything ready to go.

For a second, everything feels okay. I am surrounded by boys who, though they may not love me, at least care enough to stand by me through this.

And then the whispers start up again.

"I'm so glad that their future wasn't damaged by the skank."

"That commoner has some nerve, waltzing in here where she doesn't belong."

"She's such a whore, giving it up just to get attention."

But then I am ushered into a car that drives away from the poison of high school and my friends' laughter fills my ears, and I can forget that only this morning, my future felt so bleak and despondent.

* * *

Did you assemble the story? In case you can't and think I'm being vague, Haruhi dropped hints throughout. It wasn't in order, and you kind of have to assemble it yourself, but it's all there.

One left. It might be a bit late, but it will bring about all of those things a reader wants: all of the Hosts, a 'happily ever after', an end…

Please tune in and read it. And then please review. I'd really appreciate it.


	6. Chapter 6

Alright, I know I've pretty much dropped off the face of the planet. And, for that, I apologize. My life is just like… gah. Anyway, we have the long-awaited ending of "A Whisper of Fire in the Vein."

When I first started writing this, I kind of lied when I said it was done. The majority of it was. Just not the ending. It is based on a true story, and I had no idea how to wrap it up when the future was just the present. I kept playing with it, trying to make it from Haruhi's point of view, but it wouldn't flow. I couldn't write any more for her. She had had her say. And then, I ran into an old classmate. And it came to me.

The ending is set five years after. It is not from Haruhi's point of view. And I worked all of the Hosts in.

I'll end this now, but see me at the bottom for more notes.

* * *

The coffee on the table has long since cooled.

Then again, I've never really liked coffee, but it's innocuous. It's not connected to who we were. And that's what we needed.

It's been… five years since I've seen her… since anyone has seen her really. Not including that time that Ritsu Kasanoda _thought_ he saw her in the supermarket and blew up the Facebook wall of our graduating class with posts. She had deleted her account two months after our graduation, and nobody really blamed her.

That was about the time the shame had set in for us.

So almost two thousand days later, I almost didn't recognize her when I practically bowled her over.

It's like God tried to remedy our third year by making her already pretty face heart-stopping. The years had been far, far too kind to her—not that she's ancient. She should be newly twenty-four with her spring birthday that I'm just creepy enough to remember.

And she certainly is head-turning.

Her face is slender and smooth, built around large, honey eyes and a pink pout, framed by rich, glistening waves of dark hair. She wears different clothes too, ones that show off the thin plane of her waist and the curves that flare from it. She's certainly not hiding in a uniform like she was in April five years ago.

"How have you been, Haruhi?" My first attempt at making conversation with her, and I stumble over my words, stuttering them out.

An eyebrow arches across from me.

"How are… your friends?"

I don't remember their names, but I only ever really knew Haruhi. And I feel like she can smell it on me.

There is a long pause, long enough for me to wince through a sip of cold coffee and regret trying to clear my own guilt.

And then, "Well, Hikaru and Kaoru are off jet-setting around the world and stunning the masses with their fashions, and Tamaki is a concert pianist in New York. We talk about once a week."

"That's great," I offer. "They came here to America too?"

She nods, a movement that catches the glow of the sun in her dark hair, and I am stunned that this is who she is.

"The twins went to Parsons, and Tamaki to NYU. I met Hunny in Legal Studies my freshman year at Yale, and he introduced me to…_ everyone_ I associate with."

"I'm so glad I ran into you," I finally breathe, feeling the excitement burble up. This is my chance… to set things to rights, to soothe my aching heart, to give her peace…

The smile she shoots my way is cool and polite, but I can make this better. I can make her understand.

"Me too."

* * *

"It's your job, Mitsukuni. You make sure he actually attends his bachelor's party."

The Japanese sounded foreign to me, and I looked for its source out of curiosity.

"Hai, Haru-chan. You know me! I'll get it done!"

My brain seemed to freeze. Because I knew that brunette standing next to the blond man who was just barely taller than her.

Distantly, I could hear the chime of my phone going off, but I was fixated.

Large eyes, and long, soft looking hair. If you added a yellow schoolgirl's dress and sadness, she would be uncanny. Younger, but there.

And that was when I realized my legs were carrying me straight into her.

She made a small noise at impact but was quick to brush it off. "Please excuse me, sir."

"Haruhi."

The world seemed to stop around her name. She certainly did. Those wide, amber eyes were _staring_, a kaleidoscope of emotions painting different tints throughout.

"Arai-kun, how are you?"

The phone jingled again, but I couldn't tamp down the spring of guilt that had appeared anew in my heart.

"I'm… well."

I wasn't. I was so far from a state of well-being that it was almost laughable.

"How rude of me," she finally burbled, pulling at the elbow of the man she had been talking to. "This is Mitsukuni Haninozuka—one of my very close friends, and the best friend of my…"

I was vaguely aware of that blond man with large brown eyes, but I couldn't let her finish. There would be excuses and running, and I was already late to work, so my mouth grew with the words I exhaled all over her introduction.

I once got so drunk that I ruined the trashcan in my dorm room—it was on a dark night, one of the ones where I thought about her. I had to dole out fifty bucks to pay for a new one, and my roommate teased me for the rest of the year, but it had closed her large eyes in my mind for a night. That stomach-clenching feeling I got right before I'd puked that time is back, only this time it was words that spewed from me.

"Would you like to get coffee with me?!"

* * *

I thought I saw her once. We both went overseas to the same large college, and while she lost herself in a sea of new faces, I couldn't help but look for her occasionally.

And there was one time… a moment… a second.

At a club where I was working my junior year, in the flickering lights of a strobe, my eyes fell on the sinuous curl of a brunette's body against another guy.

I remember watching her, the roll of her hips and arch of her back, and the entranced look on his face as she thrummed against him, and feeling so jealous.

And then her face turned. She had been so eerily familiar to me, and her name caught in my throat.

She looked up, and her eyes wandered over the hand I didn't realize I had raised, following the line of my arm to my face. And then she pressed her hand to his thigh and was whirled into a pretty blonde girl as the guy stepped up behind her to totally block my view. And I went back to work, sure that I'd made a mistake.

That night, as I swept the dance space where she'd been, pieces of her came to me… the wave of her brown hair, the line of her body… and the frightened, vast pools of her sad, amber eyes.

* * *

The rumors spread quickly. If there was one thing I remember most vividly about that time, it was how fast her name became mud. And how easily we all believed it.

It started with a whisper. And then looks. It swept through our year, trickling down to those below us. She had a set of twins who became her shadow and surrounded her every time she set out for classes. And then the teachers got wind.

One morning, her father followed her into the third year hallway, murder in his eyes. She met him halfway.

No one could ever really say definitively what was said between the two. But there were plenty of guesses. He gesticulated a lot, and she whispered something. And something in the man broke looking at her.

The image of him hugging her is forever burned into my lids. And just how small she looked.

But she was the villain, we were told. The whore who couldn't keep her legs shut. The commoner who tried to play with company politics of which she had no knowledge. She earned it.

Yet still the rumors escalated.

She couldn't walk down a hall without being called something derogatory. Since she had no car, the limos of her rich friends that she rode in were egged and painted with "slut". I even heard her apartment got it once.

She buried herself in extra-large clothing and the three friends she had left, one of whom flounced off to her ex-boyfriend every so often.

I knew that it had been started out of jealousy, that her ex and the girl he cheated on her with were behind it and proud of their accomplishment.

After all, how many times can you say you brought down a well-respected goody-two-shoes?

And I did nothing. Even when she smiled with sad eyes at me in classes or politely excused herself around me. Even though we had been kind of friends.

I let them pick her apart, and that's why I'm going to Hell. And why I invited her for coffee.

* * *

"Arai-kun, we can cut to the chase here," she finally says, eyes benign and wide. Perhaps she doesn't realize the power such a look has, how it makes her seem like you could tell her all of your secrets, but I have to bite at the corners of my lips to tamp down the flow of apologies wanting to leave my lips.

"How was it? After… everything…"

It is not the question I want to ask, and it's not the one she wants to answer. Her demeanor shifts abruptly, and I can feel the end of our meeting approaching. She's got that removed, guarded look back in her eyes, and she's fiddling with the coffee cozy.

"I was, you know?"

I don't know what she's hinting at. And my look causes her to swallow hard.

"I was a virgin when I left school." She looks so embarrassed to divulge this, and the bile threatens murder to my esophagus.

I must make a sound because she meets my eyes suddenly. She has aged in the space of two seconds, is calm and collected and a woman again.

"I lost it to a DA four months after graduation. It was a dark faze. You could say I lost my religion," she chuckles softly. It lacks humor. It makes my stomach twist. I despise myself more.

"Haruhi… I'm so sorry. For what we did… or didn't do."

This was what this was building to. This moment. For five years I've hated myself because she deserved more.

Her hand finds mine, and she flips my palm up, tracing across the lines that cross it. The gesture feels intimate, as does the soft smile caressing the corners of her mouth.

"Oh, Arai-kun. I always did like you best. You have a wonderful heart."

I want to tell her that no, I don't. That, though I may not have started the rumors, I did nothing to stop them. That I want her forgiveness.

Instead, I can feel a flush rise into my ears.

"Yes, well…" I offer, patting at her hand awkwardly.

A man appears over her shoulder. Tall and dark, the kind of good-looking and muscled that makes me want to hit the gym. Women are watching him, but his eyes are only on the girl before me. I know it in that instant: he is owned by her.

"Arai-kun, this is Takashi Morinozuka."

I don't know how I missed the ring before. It's a huge diamond, adorning her slender finger with fire. But you wouldn't expect anything less from one of his lineage—everybody in Japan knows about his family and how they like to fly beneath the radar.

I can't name what I'm feeling—because maybe I wasn't quite sure what this reconciliation was building to.

She reaches for me, embracing me, and then there is the whisper of her lips against my cheek. I close my eyes at the sensation, hoping for something different. A different high school… a different ending… a different man… a different life.

"If you were any other man," she breathes. It's like the worst kind of insult, and we both know it, and that I deserve it.

"You're glowing. I'm happy for you," I murmur—the falsehood threatens to knock my teeth out, but I want what's best for her.

Even if I thought that was me.

She releases me, and his hand is between us, large and wide as she slips her small fingers over his and rises fluidly.

She looks like a woman. She _is_ one.

Kyoya tried to rip that from her, and for but a moment in time, he succeeded. Instead, she's found a man who looks like she created the world, a man I'll envy, and she found happiness.

Fractures heal, and a catastrophe in high school is a meaningless trifle. I hate myself for even letting it become that.

"They got married, Haruhi," I call after her, and she turns from her fiancé with a small smile and gleaming, happy eyes.

"I know."

* * *

For note of reference: What a DA means that Haruhi refers to—it means desk assistant here in the university system. They sit at the desks in the dorms and help people get into rooms, get their mail, fix shit.

Um… if you have any questions, please leave them in a _signed_review. I can't reply if it isn't signed, but I hope this was clear enough.

I might be convinced in the future to do, maybe, an outtake on how Haruhi met Mitsukuni and Takashi, but no promises. It all depends on if I can get her to tell me more of her story.

Again, this was based on a real story. And, yes, it sucked going through it. But strength is learned, and at our lowest we find out just how strong we are.

I hope you enjoyed, truly. And I hope to see you all soon.


End file.
